Could 2020 *be* any crazier?
Many moons ago, I posted that 2019 had been pretty bad and kind of a downer, and… well, don’t ya know it, 2020 has turned out even worse. But for everyone!
The Outer Worlds – First-Play Review!
Yeah, it’s another game review! But this time it’s a VIDEO game,
and specifically a PC game review (hashtag PCRaceSuperiorRace)
featuring The Outer Worlds.
Now, I don’t claim
to be a video game blogger, but this one has been on my radar for a
while. I rarely get games that are less than a year old – my Steam
backlog is as shameful as the next person’s – so it’s not often
I play something that’s recent. I still haven’t finished Fallout:
New Vegas or Skyrim, and haven’t even loaded Fallout 4! However, I
knew I’d have some free time on a recent trip, so got The Outer
Worlds (hereafter abbreviated ‘OW’ for brevity) from Humble
Bundle Games with a nice little discount and over the past couple of
days played enough to just about finish the first part of the game.
Mandalorian – a Spoiler-Free TPS Review!
Having just binge-watched all 8 episodes of The Mandalorian, I can definitely say that if you’re a Star Wars fan or looking for a pretty cool space-faring action series to get stuck into, this should be right up your street.
I was worried about mentions in reviews of ‘fan service’, which can be a good or a bad thing in branded settings like Star Wars, Pixar, etc., but the little bits of that I saw weren’t in your face and were definitely noticeable for longtime fans, but not so hidden that you’ll need three extra viewings and a nerd checklist to catch everything.
RIP Christopher Tolkien
This broke a few days ago, so those in geekdom will already know this, but J. R. R. Tolkien’s son Christopher died this week. Hopefully, anyone who is a fan of fantasy, science fiction and most things that sprang from these genres (magic/vampire/werewolf/anything like that young adult series, anyone?) has given a thought to what Christopher Tolkien was able to do, because without him it’s quite likely we’d be decades behind where we are now in regards to the general state of fantasy and sci-fi in movies, video games, books, tabletop games, wargames and much more.
First Play Review: Terraforming Mars
Last week our gaming group FINALLY had the opportunity to try out Terraforming Mars, one of the top-rated board games that you can get right now, apparently. The board game group is also the RPG (role-playing game) group, with the emphasis on RPG stuff, so it’s not too often we sit down and play a board game rather than do roleplaying. Every year or so we look back, realize that we didn’t play as many board games as we really wanted to, and collectively say we should play at least one board game each month. Which, when we meet up once a week, takes 25% of our RPG time and turns it into board game time.
I don’t mind, because I have a lot of board games that I’ve bought over the years, plus gotten through massive Kickstarter campaigns, and we’ve never played them. In fact, I’m going through a big sell-off of several board games and expansions that were ordered at the height of the hype around several campaigns. Then, of course you wait months or years, the game arrives and there’s maybe another resurgence of interest, and the hype machine moves on to the next huge Kickstarter campaign. It’s hard to keep up with, especially when you have limited room for huge boxes of board games, and when you’re not even playing them, it’s impossible to justify the cost.
Anyway…I digress. Suffice to say I’m selling off a lot of games that we sadly never got to play, so I hope they’re off to good homes. Now, let’s talk about Terraforming Mars!
January Hobby Medals – Bronze Achieved Already!
Looking back to the last couple of posts about a way to stay motivated (I describe the ‘medal system’ here in Part 2), I’m very happy to say I’ve already achieved my Bronze medal for January!
As I mentioned, this is the easiest of the challenges this month, which is why it’s ‘just’ a bronze, but hey, I’ve got 6 more Battlescribe lists for my Horus Heresy army than I did a week ago!
New Year, New Hobby Challenges! pt 2
If you missed Part 1 of this post, click here!
So after deciding that finishing 2 armies and making a significant dent in my terrain stash is going to be the focus of my 2020 hobby year, the next step is deciding how to actually do it.
I’ve seen a lot of different ways to do this – for a few years, I actually organized a monthly ‘Oath’ painting challenge for wargamers on the Something Awful forums – but a gaming friend of mine has come up with something quite unique and frankly pretty ingenius! I present…
The Medal Hobby Challenge!
New Year, New Hobby Challenges! pt 1
Whether you call them goals, resolutions, challenges, or whatever, it seems every hobbyist out there with a blog, site or page is setting out their stall and declaring their hobby challenges!
Well, this being the first day of the year, I wanted to share something similar…that was also a bit different and unique!
I’m not great with getting through my hobby backlog, like every hobby butterfly. I have armies stretching back to late 5th edition – I started with a big bunch of old style Dark Eldar, then moved to Chaos Space Marines with the 6th edition starter set and went in all sorts of ways after that!
Getting the Armies & Hordes book from Dave Taylor through his Kickstarter campaign helped a bit with getting me to organize what I’ve got, write it out in Google Sheets online and track the build & painting progress of each unit or model. I have most of my orks listed, but need to crack the whip and get my Horus Heresy Alpha Legion in the spreadsheet as well!
Well…It’s Certainly Been Quite A Year!
If you haven’t been paying attention – and I don’t blame you if you haven’t, there’s certainly been a lot going on in the rest of the world, and I imagine in your own life! – it’s been a rocky year for TPS. In addition to serious ongoing health problems
We’re Taking Commissions!
Tiny Plastic Spacemen is a reliable, UK-based commission painter for your bespoke game or display model needs! We offer a full service model building service, from purchase to delivery of custom painted models! And we are taking new commissions once again! (If you want to skip all the preamble and